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I had the good fortune to know Mitch Snyder. As a journalist in Washington D.C. throughout the 1980s for WAMU-FM, the Washington Post and other publications, I frequently interviewed Mitch, and to this day he remains one of the finest people I have ever met. Once, I woke him up one morning from his night spent sleeping on a grate, outdoors, near the U.S, Capitol. No one was watching him, it was by no means a "media event," and I only knew he was there because I happened to need to interview him that day, and the CCNV told me that was where I would find him. He slept there because hundreds of other people in D.C. slept on grates, and knowing that, he just could not sleep well in a bed. Within one minute of waking, he was telling me the story of how society owed compassion to the homeless. It's been 20 years, but I still remember it so well.
Snyder's true legacy may well be popularizing the term "homeless" to describe people without homes. It is in common parlance today, but when Mitch began his activism in the 1970s, such people were typically termed "bums," "tramps," "winos" and worse. Mitch had the insight, and knew enough of these people personally, to know that they came from all walks of life, and, indeed, the only thing they had in common is that they had no home. So it stands today as a remarkable example of coining (or, at least popularizing - I am not sure if Mitch invented the term) a term that was at once more accurate and more compassionate than the ones that preceeded it. A million acts of mercy and kindness have flowed from the perception that people without homes are merely "homeless," and not necessarily or even probably criminals or insane.
Although Mitch would have argued that criminals and the insane deserve our compassion, too.
I was a member of CCNV when he died. I spoke to him the last afternoon he was seen alive. Although we never know why anyone dies this way, he was just so emotionally tired from a long list of personal and professional setbacks that he just needed to get away and could not do it the way you and I would. The District Council of DC had recently refused to fund the Right to Shelter Law that had been passed in 1984, after years of fines for refusing to provide enough beds for the needs of Washington, DC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.242.215.237 (talk) 20:11, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
